Relationships among personal factors, health literacy, and self-care behaviors for prevention of chronic kidney disease in eldery hypertention patients

Abstract

        The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to explore the relationships between personal factors, health literacy, and self-care behaviors for prevention of chronic kidney disease in elderly hypertension patients. A sample of 138. The research tools included: 1) a personal information questionnaire 2) The health literacy scale 3) The self-care behavior assessment form for prevention of chronic kidney disease in elderly hypertension patients and 4) chronic kidney disease prevention behaviors, which were checked for content validity by 3 experts and obtained an index of consistency (IOC) between .67 -1.00. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the instruments revealed acceptable reliability scores of .90 - .92. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Pearson's product moment correlation coefficient.

        The results revealed that the sample had a low average of health literacy score (mean = 7.35, SD = 0.61) and low self-care behaviors for prevention chronic kidney disease progression (mean = 15.81, SD = 0.61). In addition, personal factors such as gender, education level, and occupation had a low positive relationship with self-care behavior to delay kidney failure with a statistical significance of p < .05 (r = .172, .342, and .233). Health literacy factors such as knowledge and understanding, access to information, and decision-making had a low positive relationship with self-care behavior to delay kidney failure with a statistical significance of p < .05 (r = .134, .235, and .087).